Teleportation of humans - will it ever be possible?

[kirkster501]

^^^^  Star Trek style?  Often wondered this.

Doing this in a lab and transferring quantum state of a static, unliving object between two highly controlled labs then maybe?  But to be beamed down onto another world without any equipment or machine to do the re-assembly?

What do you think?

[Star101]

At present, its hard to say ."impossible"

But as is shown in Star Trek shows themselves, there are occasions when the technology fails and those transported "don't make it"

Personally, I think it would be impossible to transport live creatures, never mind humans. One has to also take into account the electrical impulses that are happening all the time. The transport would disrupt those!

Not to mention the energy required!!

 

[Alien 13]

I am sure it will eventually be done with small amounts of inert matter but not humans and god forbid a fly gets in the transmitter chamber 

Alan

[heliumstar]

The seed is already planted. It is in collective human mind that dematerialisation->rematerialisation is possible so eventually it will happen.

[Davey-T]

As said the amount of energy needed theoretically would be prohibitive but maybe once someone comes up with a new power source ?

Did I read that something similar had already been done at a quantum physics level ? you could then be in 2 places at once.

Dave

Edited May 8, 2019 by Davey-T

[Alien 13]

I think a version of teleportation already exists, I look at a nice shiny thing on Amazon, hit a button and it magically appears at my door 

More seriously perhaps the energy requirements could be overcome by using sacrificial matter at the receiver that is converted into energy during the transportation process.....

Alan

Edited May 8, 2019 by Alien 13

[Davey-T]

It would certainly solve the problems of getting to Mars, you could go for the day and be home in time for tea 

Dave

[Stargazer33]

No, never. Just like humans living permanently on Mars; and don't get me started on interstellar travel!!! ?

Edited May 8, 2019 by Stargazer33

[John]

It could be a dangerous business if the technology fails. This from Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe):

"I teleported home last night
With Ron and Sid and Meg.
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg."

 

 

[vlaiv]

Nope

Even if we come up with theoretical framework for that, there is engineering challenge that can't be overcome.

You'll need to create vacuum in place where you want to teleport something, and you need to do something with that matter - so maybe full duplex link would be solution for that, but then, think about information needed to encode whole system - no bandwidth would handle that in "near real time".

We can also discuss possibility of every single particle being "quantum tunneled" at the same time for exact same distance - but the energy needed, and I have a sneaky suspicion that one would have problem with uncertainty principle somewhere along the way - just think what would happen to a system if there is even smallest uncertainty in teleported distance or direction. Not to mention any possible entanglements with surroundings and "ripples" that would happen.

[JamesF]

Perhaps it could be done a different way though?

Not by disassembling and reassembling someone, but by somehow "folding" spacetime and "pushing them through"?

James

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Perhaps it could be done a different way though?

Not by disassembling and reassembling someone, but by somehow "folding" spacetime and "pushing them through"?

James

Good point, but I suspect we might have a problem there also - in order to fold/bend space we have to change its curvature and do it without "discontinuities" - that would imply that we would get very silly curvature and tidal forces that no matter would be able to traverse intact. At least I think so

 

[Davey-T]

2 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Perhaps it could be done a different way though?

Not by disassembling and reassembling someone, but by somehow "folding" spacetime and "pushing them through"?

James

You could stretch them out really long and thin so they were still one thing then let go and they'd appear at the other end 

Dave

[vlaiv]

Maybe best option would be to stop the time in the whole universe and use good old slingshot to catapult them over

 

[mihaighita]

2 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Good point, but I suspect we might have a problem there also - in order to fold/bend space we have to change its curvature and do it without "discontinuities" - that would imply that we would get very silly curvature and tidal forces that no matter would be able to traverse intact. At least I think so

 

Not to mention that you would need negative energy density (therefore exotic matter) like in an Alcubierre drive. And the normal energy requirements are beyond comprehension.

[JamesF]

Well, all I'm going to add is that it's amazing what you can achieve if you don't know that it isn't possible

James

[upahill]

I don't understand the physics enough, but thought it had been done at the atomic level. Perhaps if we could travel significantly faster we wouldnt need to transport?

[Ben the Ignorant]

People who have out-of-body experiences say they can go anywhere they want in the Universe instantly. If there's some truth to that it's because they don't have to drag their material body along.

[SIDO]

It's all about information storage, to store all the individual atom details for every atom and its precise location and type in a human is a massive data storage undertaking.

One analogy stated it would take our current hard drive technology with a stack stacked to the edge of the Milky Way to contain this information for a single unique human then a processor that could process and realocate all the atoms almost instantly so one would not be bleeding all over the place upon arrival...This equipment would be needed at both the point of tranmission and collection, to do teleportation without collection and reconstruction equipment at the receive location would require a force field with the dexterity to place single atoms at precise coordinates at great distances and if we look at current force field experiments the science is quite unsteady to say the least.

My understanding is we haven't even yet reached what would be considered the stone age of  teleportation technology advancement, the good news is experiments in teleportation may not bring dramatic results but do indeed reveal limits and new discoveries none the less and are always an interesting read.

I completed all my out of body experiences as a young man and now just do coffee induced thought experiments instead ?

 

                          Freddie...

Edited May 9, 2019 by SIDO

[vlaiv]

11 hours ago, upahill said:

I don't understand the physics enough, but thought it had been done at the atomic level. Perhaps if we could travel significantly faster we wouldnt need to transport?

This is not quite true.

Current state of affairs in physics is as follows:

- There is well established physics and experimental evidence (not only that, it is used in industry extensively) for - quantum tunneling. It can be viewed as a sort of teleportation of single particle. QE says that due to uncertainty principle there is probability of measuring certain particle everywhere in universe (very small probability, yet above 0) - it also means that particle can "jump" over or rather thru barriers that would be impossible in classical physics. I'm not however sure we can control this as it depends on probability.

- There is theory and experiments about quantum teleportation - again this is not the type of teleportation we are talking about here (but can potentially be basis for). It is transfer of quantum state via "classical" means - like light beam / electrical impulses. This means that no mass is actually moved / teleported, but rather exact quantum state is recreated at distant location (transferred rather than copied due to no cloning theorem). In theory we could use this for sort of teleportation - we don't actually move any mass, but rather use exact same number of particles to recreate full quantum state of object at the destination. No way of knowing what sort of impact that would have on live organisms (although current understanding of physics says none - it should work), but this relates to the thing I previously mentioned - needed energy and bandwidth to stream such amount of data. It is also under the limit of GR - that no information transfer can be done faster than the speed of light - so it would certainly not be instantaneous. I suspect that this holds for any soft of teleportation.

- There is theory as of 2016 that proposes actual mass transfer teleportation (on particle level), but no experimental confirmation yet. Word is that some Chinese scientists are working on this.

[upahill]

27 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

- There is well established physics and experimental evidence (not only that, it is used in industry extensively) for - quantum tunneling. It can be viewed as a sort of teleportation of single particle. QE says that due to uncertainty principle there is probability of measuring certain particle everywhere in universe (very small probability, yet above 0) - it also means that particle can "jump" over or rather thru barriers that would be impossible in classical physics. I'm not however sure we can control this as it depends on probability.

Ah it was Quantum Tunneling I had heard of, I think the book I was reading was also taking about neutrinos ability to pass through things. I understood very little but the gist the author was getting at was that these could form the basis for transportation research. Im now going to have to figure out which book and reread it ?

27 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

- There is theory and experiments about quantum teleportation - again this is not the type of teleportation we are talking about here (but can potentially be basis for). It is transfer of quantum state via "classical" means - like light beam / electrical impulses. This means that no mass is actually moved / teleported, but rather exact quantum state is recreated at distant location (transferred rather than copied due to no cloning theorem). In theory we could use this for sort of teleportation - we don't actually move any mass, but rather use exact same number of particles to recreate full quantum state of object at the destination. No way of knowing what sort of impact that would have on live organisms (although current understanding of physics says none - it should work), but this relates to the thing I previously mentioned - needed energy and bandwidth to stream such amount of data. It is also under the limit of GR - that no information transfer can be done faster than the speed of light - so it would certainly not be instantaneous. I suspect that this holds for any soft of teleportation.

My ignorance will now show even more, but if we recreate something in a distant location, without actually transporting those particles to the new location - what happens to the old particles?

I find everything so interesting yet understand so little ?

Edit: Wasn't a book I read it in, but a series of lectures:

 

Edited May 9, 2019 by upahill

[petevasey]

16 hours ago, Alien 13 said:

I am sure it will eventually be done with small amounts of inert matter but not humans and god forbid a fly gets in the transmitter chamber 

Alan

You must have seen one of  'The Fly' films.  The remake with Jeff Goldblum was seriously scary.

Cheers,

Peter

[andrew s]

Even if it were possible in principle,  which I doubt. If the data cannot be read instantly what happens to those bits that moved fractionally or electrical impulses that initiated in the interval during the data read? Also if you just send data what do you do with the material (person) left behind?

Regards Andrew 

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, upahill said:

My ignorance will now show even more, but if we recreate something in a distant location, without actually transporting those particles to the new location - what happens to the old particles?

Well, principle of QM says that for quantum teleportation to work - "source" state of the system needs to end up in some undefined state (can't be related to transported state, so only logical thing is to end up in undetermined state). If we stretch our imagination and apply that to hypothetical person teleportation system - this would mean that person being teleported needs to be "disintegrated" - or rather broken to particles and those particles "stored" for further "incoming" teleportation - in the same way as for first teleportation case, when we need matter on receiver side to assemble person (quantum system) in exact state as source of teleportation.

This lends it self for very nice Sci-Fi plot - what would happen if information is stolen in transit? Due to finite speed of teleportation, there exists a time period where person is existing only as "in-flight" information (again, intriguing thought about quantum information and existence - we are all nothing more than information?). What would happen if "kidnappers" should intercept teleportation beam and "kidnap" person being teleported for ransom? We could expand the plot by leaking some of the "person information" into environment branching to either weird effects that would produce in the world around us, or epic tale of trying to "gather oneself across the universe" .

 

[kirkster501]

Even if it were possible to teleport in lab conditions, Star Trek shows people being beamed down to a determined place.   There is no equipment to reconstruct the teleported object at that place.  

Maybe they could tunnel through Space Time, from the Transportation room send the body through that tunnel and the tunnel emerges at a predefined place that the Enterprise programs on that given body?  Pure science fiction of course but  in the absence of reconstruction equipment that must be the way...?!